Inspiring Impressionism

The need to seek solace from the real world is still with me and today I lost myself in the beautiful paintings of Daubigny, Monet and Van Gogh shown in the Inspiring Impressionism exhibition held at the Scottish National Gallery on The Mound, Edinburgh. I loved the flower display outside. You can only see one pillar on the picture but all of them were decorating in the same way, using the colours of the French flag and also the Dutch one, so covering all artists shown.

As soon as I bought the catalogue it came to me that I had already seen the painting shown on the cover and once I looked it up I realized it comes from The Mesdag Collection, part of what I knew in my youth as Panorama Mesdag, an amazing museum in The Hague where I went quite a few times with my maternal grandmother (oma). She lived in Leiden and it was a standard part of my visits to her, to go to The Hague and see the panorama.

I remember going through a small door, climbing up many steps and at the top seeing a 360 degrees view of the beach in Scheveningen, painted by the painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag who was a member of the Haagse School (The Hague School).  He was not just a painter himself but also an impressive art collector.   The collection has a lot of sea and beach scenes and one of them is the painting shown on the catalogue, by Daubigny called Sunset near Villerville c. 1876. Seeing it made the memories come flooding back (and brought a few tears to my eyes).

Apparently The Mesdag Collection is now part of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam where this exhibition will be shown later in the autumn after the show in Edinburgh. The exhibition here is on till 2nd October and I will no doubt pay a return visit later on once I have read the catalogue.

It was good to see how busy the galleries were, not too busy for viewing the pictures but with a lovely buzz of people admiring the work.